Ontology

The following is a list of technical terms associated with the BUGswarm platform. For any questions regarding these terms, please consult c4milo or aturley.

BUGswarm: An M2M cloud platform technology that allows devices to communicate fast and effectively through the use of HTTP interfaces.

BUGswarm Management UI: The web UI located at bugswarm.net. Can be referenced as just "Management UI" as well.

Swarm: A swarm is a collection of resources. It can be abstracted as a chat room of devices that produce and consume information from the swarm.

Resource: A resource is a physical device or web application that produces and/or consumes information. Resources belong to a specific user account and can be members of one or many swarms.

• Producer: A producer is a type of resource. Producers broadcast information in the swarms they are members of.
• Consumer: A consumer is a type of resource. Consumers retrieve information from the swarms they are members of.

User: A user is a human participant in BUGswarm. Users may hold possession of swarms and resources and their resources may participate in many swarms, including those they do not have ownership of.

• Username: Your BUGnet account username. Used for authentication and identification purposes when using BUGswarm.

• Password: Your BUGnet account password. Used for authentication purposes when using BUGswarm.

• API Key(s): Each user may possess up to three API keys (master, producer, consumer) at any one time, each relating to a separate set of permissions. All users must acquire at least a master key to use BUGswarm. API keys are used for account verification.

Member: A resource is a member of a swarm if it is configured to have access to that swarm. A resource becomes a member by being added to the swarm and loses member status when removed. This is different than being a participant in a swarm (see below). Just being a member does not give you presence in a swarm.

Participant: A resource is a participant in a swarm if it is actively producing or consuming information within the swarm. A resource must be a member of the swarm to be a participant. Participants in a swarm are said to have presence in the swarm.

Producing/Consuming Data vs. Sending/Receiving Messages: The overarching theme of BUGswarm is that you have resources that can produce or consume data to/from swarms or individual resources. The method by which they do so is to send and receive messages. The messages that are sent and received contain the data being produced or consumed in addition to meta-data that describes the data being consumed or produced.